What happened to soma?

Somewhere in between the Rig Veda and the Suttas, soma disappeared. What happened?

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Perhaps they finished all their stash of soma? :upside_down_face:

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In The Rgvedic religious system and its Central Asian and Hindukush antecedents Witzel argues that ‘In sum, we can observe Soma as an ingredient to Rgvedic religion whose intrusion can be pinpointed in time (c. 2000 BCE) and space (southern part of Western Central Asia, close to Muzh Tagh Ata).’

It seems that they may have left Soma as they moved East, rather than Soma leaving them.

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Samyutta/Samyukta suttas do not need Soma but, instead, “jānāti passati yathābhūta”.

“O, he’s not comin’ back!
He’s not comin’ back!
Though the days roll on and the nights grow long
Soma’s never comin’ back.

And still we have the scriptures
but we’re not quite sure what they mean.
We interpretate the Vedas
like a philological dream.”

(Adaptation of original by Bhante Sujato)

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Okay, but what about the role of soma in the Satapatha Brahmana? It’s much closer than the Vedas to the time of the suttas, and soma appears in it quite regularly. That’s actually what got me thinking about this.

I’m wondering if Witzel has anything to say about this?

One small detail I just came across in the Vedic Index. The soma is said to be “sweet-smelling” in Rig Veda 10.97.19 and 10.107.2, but Satapatha 4.1.3.6 complains,

He stank in their nostrils,–sour and putrid he blew towards them: he was neither fit for offering, nor was he fit for drinking.

Perhaps this reflects the use of a different plant, or one that had gone off (due to being preserved or transported?). But it is very thin!

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Random thought - my father smoked a pipe. Some of the tobaccos were sweet smelling. Afterwards his breath was anything but sweet smelling. :grin:

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https://www.researchgate.net/publication/334683063_Soma_and_Haoma_Ayahuasca_analogues_from_the_Late_Bronze_Age/link/6633600108aa54017ad49a6f/download

I think if you’re intersted in this subject, perhaps you could try contacting author of this article/book? He seems really informed.

Here is his academia.edu profile:

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Bhante, durian is sweet smelling to me. But some people complain that it is stinky. I think those people got it wrong.

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If I recall correctly, his argument is that the PIE speakers originally drank something different (mead, I think), but picked up the consumption of Ephedra (which is bitter) from people who were indigenous to Central Asia.

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In her 2010 book, The Hindus: An Alternative History, which ingeniously looks at Indian history and philosophy through the lens of women, Doniger writes about sacrificial soma rituals, common in Vedic times. These texts were written when most citizens lived in the mountains, where mushrooms were abundant. She noticed a textual shift when people moved into early urban civilizations around the Ganges, however. Soma disappeared, replaced by kriyas, purification exercises that informed the earliest instances of yoga.
Mushrooms were gone, but people needed their fix. Without the god-inducing beverage, they began creating intense breathing exercises to alter their consciousness. Yoga was born.

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Thanks @Invo and @UpasakaMichael for the Matthew Clark reference.

For general knowledge for the rest of us, from:

Clark, Matthew. “Soma.” Soma (2019)

In the Vedic religious practices of the Brahmans of South Asia the most esteemed and elaborate of the communal śrauta (from the root √śru, ‘hear’) rites, of which there are about 160 kinds, are sacrifices (yāga/yajña) in which participants drink the concoction called soma. Several scholars have commented that the two central features of ancient Indo-Iranian religion are the cults of soma/haoma and of fire. In the Ṛgveda the ‘mystery’ of the descent of fire and of soma are sometimes placed together.

He mentions how surā, which was apparently an alcohol-based soma alternative, may have dropped out:


In the traditional, Brahmanical world the use of surā is generally looked down on or
forbidden; soma and surā are sometimes paired and contrasted in the Vedas. Surā is
of many kinds, but is usually an alcoholic drink based on fermented rice or barley,
which is used during various Hindu festivals throughout South Asia. In various
regional concoctions, some preparations of surā contain additionally several plants
known to be psychoactive.

He spends much of the article explaining how soma is probably referring to any number of psychoactive plants – apparently a point of contention among scholars:

Soma is still prepared by Brahmins for use in soma rites, which these days are seldom performed. However, for many centuries the plants used in soma rituals are known to be substitutes for the ‘real’ soma. In the Brāhmaṇas, which date from around 800 BCE, a dozen or so plants (mostly of uncertain botanical identification) are listed as soma substitutes, should the ‘real’ soma be unavailable (see Swamy, 1976). The plant most commonly used these days by Brahmans in soma rites is Sarcostemma brevistigma, a common, vine-like plant that exudes a non-psychoactive, milky sap.

Harry Falk:

Falk, Harry. “Soma I and II.” Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies (1989)

ties the ritual use of soma to its quality of keeping one awake.

This effect of Soma-drinking is referred to many times. In RV 8.92,23

Indra is awake because he has drunk Soma

One can imagine why this property would be helpful for the ritual:

There are several stanzas proving that the poet, feeling wide awake, associates his ability to formulate with the influence of Soma.


It fits the picture of the night that it is Agni who is the other deity most often
described as ‘awake’. RV 8.44,29, where he is called ‘awake like a poet’, has already been mentioned; in RV 5.11,1 he is born as the wakeful warden of the
people (jdnasya gopa ajanista jāgrvir); in 1.31,9 he is the ‘waking’ god par excellence (devo devesv
 jāgrvih), he is awake also in RV 3.24,3 and 6.15,8, but the most important reference of all is RV 5.44,15


What follows is an investigation of Ephedra as the real soma – also a widely discussed theory, apparently. Interestingly, because of its grassy features:

Mahdihassan, a botanist, has argued in favour of Ephedra. Much of what he says is useful, but his main evidence, a terracotta from Gandhara, does not withstand critical investigation. The picture Mahdihassan discusses shows Buddha and Vajrapani facing some person who has evidently cut grass. The Buddha stands erect, holding a bunch of the plant in his left hand, tips downwards. Beside him is a heap of similar plants. Mahdihassan now interprets this heap as a cut bush of ephedra. The similarity is great, but not striking. Therefore it would be wiser to stick to the old interpretation, which follows the textual tradition, declaring the crouching man to be Svastika, Pali sotthiya, a grass-cutter, who furnishes the Buddha with eight bundles of grass for a seat. The Buddha holds one bushel in his hand, the seven others are heaped together, thus
appearing like an inverted bush of ephedra for someone eager to see it this way.

Here’s the Mahdihassan reference:

Mahdihassan, S. “SOMA OF THE ARYANS AND ASH OF THE ROMANS.” Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, vol. 68, no. 1/4, 1987, pp. 639–44.

In any case, if we keep with the Ephedra theory:

The taste of the Ephedra twigs is astringent; the taste of Soma, when not yet mixed with milk, is called tivra, ‘sharp’

By the way, the Google search engine pointed to this lively discussion and this post in particular by @Vaddha (which more or less sums up all the research I just did :smile:)

Now, to Vadda’s point, maybe it dropped out of the EBTs because they couldn’t make it anymore. However, if it’s Ephedra, they could have kept making it.

If it were Ephedra, did the Buddha drop it because he didn’t need people to stay awake all night for the ritual?

Hmmm :thinking:

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Yes, I think so. The Buddha instead taught:
“one who guards the sense-doors” (indriyesu guuttadvāro), “moderate in eating” (bhojane mattaññu), and “devoted to wakefulness” (jāgariyam anuyutto) (SN35.198). He considered one who possessed of these three practices dwells full of pleasure and happiness (sukhasomanassabahulo) in this very life, and has a basis for the destruction of the influxes (āsavānaṁ khayāya). (cf.: SN 35.198, SN35.120. SA 275 = AN8.9).
Pages 97-99 from The Fundamental Teachings of Early Buddhism Choong Mun-keat 2000.pdf (216.5 KB)

Any type of intoxicant or drug is/was foreign to vedic ritual as far as I know. Those who suggest such things don’t have the first clue about the topic. Nowhere in Vedic or Sanskrit literature (primary or commentarial) has it ever been described as a hallucinogen or as alcoholic.

In my understanding - Soma was the sugarcane (it was originally grown wild in the Rgvedic era) which when crushed yielded the juice which was mixed with milk and drunk at ritual. When it later began to get cultivated as an agricultural produce en-masse, it was no longer considered special and its use in Vedic ritual waned. Its (the sugarcane juice’s) white colour was the colour of the moon (whereupon the moon, also called Soma, when it waxes and wanes, was thought to be due to the Devas periodically drinking their cup of celestial soma). India was the origin of sugarcane cultivation and sugar production.

Soma’s identity had for a very long time been lost as soma-sacrifices are performed very few and far between.

SN7.8 has an incident where a Brahmin from the Bhāradvāja gotra had performed an Agnihotra, and offers a bowl of soma-pāyasam (payas means milk; pāyasam is a drink made from milk; soma-pāyasam is soma-juice mixed with milk) to the Buddha as the Buddha’s response to his initial statements appears to have impressed him. The Buddha however says to the effect “I dont consume food that has been offered to the gods in a Vedic ritual” (literally “food for which hymns had been chanted-over”) and refuses to drink the soma-pāyasam for that reason. The phrase ‘somaṃ bhuñjeyya pāyasaṃ’ (meaning “please consume this soma-juice mixed with milk”) in this sutta is however mistranslated as “enjoy this milk-rice”

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Is there a different type of sugarcane that produces white juice in India? The one we have in South East Asia always produces green juice.

Interestingly, in Cone’s entry for “pāyasa” (“food made with milk”), she resolves this phrase as, ‘vijjācaranasampanno so ‘mam bhuñjeyya pāyasam”.
Which is how Sujato and Bodhi take it.

Thanks everyone for your answers! I’ll follow up with some of these sources.

Sure, it could absolutely be something like this. Lots of things, especially intoxicants have both a stinky and a sweet side.

Indeed, which is why I translate it as “beer” (the Vinaya also mentions yeast)

Indeed, it definitely is a stimulant and would have been used before going into battle, although the purely ritual use became more prominent.

Indeed, I favor the ephedra theory but it doesn’t explain everything.

It seems more like it simply wasn’t a thing. It’s only referred to as a divinity.

That would be New Guinea and Taiwan/Southern China.

Perhaps introduced to India by Munda speakers from the east before the Vedic period.

Can you expand on this in the context of the Satapatha specifically? From what I can tell it was still prominent then, but I couldn’t say how often or in what circumstances the rituals were done.

It would be great to have references for this!

I would like nothing more than to be able to source soma in the suttas, however, I don’t believe this is sustainable.

Somaṁ occurs commonly in Pali in syntactically similar phrases where it is invariably so + imaṁ

It is explained like this by the commentary here:

Somaṃ bhuñjeyyāti so tevijjo brāhmaṇo imaṃ 


There are various other similar passages that likewise mention the food that is offered:

Bhuñjatu me bhagavā pūraិāsaṁ
eat my sacrificial cake.

bhuñjatu bhavaṁ gotamo pāyasaṁ
Eat the milk-rice, Mister Gotama,

Añño jano bhuñjati habyasesaṁ
others ate the leftover offering.

And we find no mention of soma. Nor, so far as I know, is soma mentioned as a consumable anywhere else in the EBTs.

I’d need something else to accept this reading; perhaps a parallel in a Sanskrit verse. The best I can find is some later texts that have phrases like somāya pāyasaṃ, but this, if I am not mistaken, addresses Soma the god in vocative, so is not relevant.

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The Wikipedia article above says:

The earliest known production of crystalline sugar began in northern India. The earliest evidence of sugar production comes from ancient Sanskrit and Pali texts.

It further says sugarcane was introduced to India by austronesian traders (not the Munda people who were not austronesian) 3000 years BP i.e. during the Vedic period.

Before this introduction, only wild sugarcane was harvested in early-Vedic India.

Ok thanks, that makes sense.

Right, fair enough, I should have read further!

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